Posts Tagged 'dessert'

I have been wracking my brain for weeks trying to remember a lovely, light dessert that I made a few years ago for some friends. I remembered that it was like individual pudding molds, sitting in some sort of fruit puree. Then I remembered that it was lemony, and I did a search of lemon desserts. And there it was: panna cotta. Panna cotta, from the Italian “cooked cream” is an Italian dessert made by simmering together milk, cream and sugar, adding some gelatin, and letting it cool until set. It is often served with fruit, either cooked or raw. And it can be very low in fat and remarkably easy to make.

I was trying to think of a Valentine’s Day dessert, so instead of the lemon panna cotta, I made one with white chocolate. You can decorate these any way you want: with candy hearts
gel icing,

or the way I liked it best, with sugared strawberriesWhite Chocolate Panna Cotta

Sprinkle gelatin over 1 cup fat free half-and-half in a small saucepan; let stand 1 to 2 minutes.
Cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat 3 minutes or until gelatin dissolves. Watch so it doesn’t burn. Remove from heat. Add chocolate, stirring until chocolate melts. I found I had to stir quite vigorously to get it to melt…maybe chopped chocolate would have worked better.
Gradually stir in remaining 1 cup half-and-half, condensed milk, and vanilla. Pour 1/2 cup custard into each of 6 stemmed glasses or 6-ounce custard cups.

Cover and chill 8 hours or until ready to serve. Turn out on a plate, or eat it straight from the bowl or glass. Makes 6 servings at 4.3 grams of fat/serving

NOTE: I happened to have white chocolate chips on hand, so I used them. They were hard to melt into the half and half. I think it would be better to use a high quality white chocolate bar, partly because the chopped chocolate might melt better, but also because the flavor of the white chocolate dominates this dessert, and probably high quality white chocolate would be better. If you use the chips, you might want to chop them up a bit.

I mentioned that I brought both the crab cups and cheesecake to our office holiday potluck. Here is the cheesecake. The original recipe was from Susan Purdy’s “Let Them Eat Cake”, which has enough wonderful dessert recipes to satisfy your sweet tooth without expanding your hips.

This cheesecake has lots of good things in it – rum chocolate, cream cheese – what’s not to like? It doesn’t taste like low fat. It is a little fussy because you have to put the springform pan in a water bath to bake it. But the majority of the mixing happens in the food processor. You’ll also notice that the crumb crust is barely there. It’s just enough to be able to lift a slice off the pan. I always thought that the crust detracted from the creamy cheesecake anyway.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat oven to 325. Coat the inside of an 8 inch springform pan with the cooking spray. Cut a sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil large enough to fit around the springform pan. Mold it loosely (for now) around the springform pan. Remove the pan from the foil and set the foil aside. Locate a large roasting pan capable of holding the springform pan and have it ready. (It’s best to do this before you are dealing with a cake pan full of batter.)

In a small bowl, blend together the chocolate wafer crumbs and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Dust the bottom of the prepared baking pan with this mixture, making sure that excess crumbs are spread out evenly. Set the pan aside.

Grate 1 ounce of the chocolate over wax paper on the medium holes of a box grater. Set aside.

Place a sifter over a medium-sized bowl, and sift together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt. Whisk in the grated chocolate.

Place the non-fat cottage cheese in a strainer set over a bowl. Cover the cheese with a piece of plastic wrap and press on it with your hand to force out any excess liquid. Place the cottage cheese in a food processor and process for 2 to 3 full minutes until it is absolutely smooth. Scrape down the bowl and blade once or twice. Add the cream cheese (I added it in pieces) and process until smooth. Add the vanilla, rum, sugar, egg and egg whites and pulse to blend. Add the dry ingredients all at once and pulse only to combine. Do not overwork batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Place the pan into the molded foil and press the foil tightly to the pan so no water can penetrate. Place the foil-wrapped pan in the roasting pan. Add hot water to reach about 1/3 of the way up the springform pan sides. Bake for one hour until the top is dry and glossy and you can touch the surface lightly without leaving a mark. Turn off the oven and leave the cake inside with the door closed for an hour.

Remove the cake from its water bath, remove the foil, and cool completely on a rack. Refrigerate, covered completely in foil of plastic wrap, for at least 4 hours or overnight. Grate one ounce of semisweet chocolate and sprinkle over cake before serving (or if you are ambitious, make chocolate curls to top the cake).
Makes 12 servings at 6 grams of fat/serving.

I went to Costco for coffee, and I came out with – figs! I hardly ever see fresh figs, but Costco had them by the dozen, so I bought 2 dozen and went home to practice fig creativity. I had a potluck to go to – and of course, there was the Wow factor to consider. Figs, by their comparative rarity and exotic beauty, have a built in Wow factor.
I bought a stick of goat cheese, too, since it seems to me that goat cheese and figs are a natural combination.

I wanted something that would be easy for people to pick up, since this potluck party, on the roof of a photographer’s office building, has hundreds of people bringing scores of dishes. Everyone puts a bit of this and that on their plate, in between dancing, listening to live music, and engaging in great conversation.

Preheat oven to 350. Place figs cut side up on a baking sheet. Brush with 1/3 cup honey.Bake for about ½ hour or until figs are soft. Allow to cool.

Beat the remaining 1/3 cup honey with the goat cheese. Stuff the figs with about a teaspoon of goat cheese each. Sprinkle with the nuts.The foil-wrapped pizza pan “platter” isn’t very elegant, but at this crowded affair, when your dish is empty, someone tosses it under the table. When you want to leave, you dig under the table to find whatever you brought your food on. This is not the place for Grandma’s best china!

Have I mentioned that I love Nutella, that creamy chocolate and hazelnut spread. I had always avoided it, because it seemed that by its very nature it would have too many fat grams for regular use – but then I read the label and discovered that it had less fat per serving than peanut butter, and my love affair began. I love Nutella on bananas:
I love it on banana bread (or regular bread, for that matter):
I love it on French Toast:
So when the potluck announcement said H-Q (that’s me) bring desserts, I knew what I had to do. The original recipe came from Sunset magazine, and made 8 humongous brownies. I honestly don’t know how you could eat one of those big brownies, since my brownie bites were very rich even for one piece – and the only thing I did to them was swap out the eggs for egg substitute.

I expect they would freeze well if you had leftovers, but don’t expect any. The ones I brought were almost all gone before the main course came off the grill (life is short, eat dessert first), and I took an empty plate home.

Microwave the 1/2 cup butter in a heatproof bowl until melted. Add chocolate, stirring until melted. Use the best quality chocolate that you can for richer flavor, and make sure that the chocolate is finely chopped:
Add sugar and cocoa to the chocolate mixture and stir to blend. I mixed this by hand and stirred thoroughly after each ingredient was added. Stir in egg substitute, vanilla, and salt. Add flour ¼ cup at a time and stir until smooth. Spoon batter evenly into muffin cups.

Use a half teaspoon measure to spoon a heaping half teaspoon of Nutella on the top of each brownie bite. Press gently into the brownie bite so it is still on top, but sinks in a little.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the brownie part comes out with just a few moist crumbs, about 15 minutes. Let cool on a rack about 10 minutes. Loosen brownies from pans, move to rack, and cool completely. This make 24 brownie bites at about 7 grams of fat/brownie. Yes, I know that these are not the lowest fat dessert ever, but they are very good, and won’t break the “fat bank” as an occasional treat or a party dessert.

First let me state up front that I am not a big Jello fan. My mother used to make a Jello mold with lime Jello for family gatherings. It was called “the green mold” and you can imagine what fun our pre-adolescent (what the heck, even our adult) minds had with that. But I bought a bottle of apple-grape juice (I’m also not a big fan of grape juice) and discovered I didn’t like it. I usually mix my juice with sparkling water to make a spritzer, and the grape flavor didn’t mix well with the sparkling water. On the other hand, I couldn’t bear to pour a whole bottle of juice down the drain. Today was a use-up-leftovers-so-I-can-clean-the-fridge day, so I figured I needed to dream up a way to use the juice.

Jelled dishes made with unflavored gelatin are not nearly as obnoxious as those made with flavored Jello mix. In fact, there are a number of admirable gelatin-based aspics and vegetable salads that would be lovely on any buffet table. I decided to make something jelled that I could take for dessert or a snack with lunch.

The basics of working with gelatin are that one tablespoon of gelatin will jell 2 cups of liquid and, if you want, 1-2 cups of fruit/vegetables. Sour cream or yogurt count as liquids. You have to soften powdered gelatin (the kind that comes in little packets) in cold water for about 5 minutes, then heat or add to hot liquid to dissolve it. Don’t let it boil – that kind of takes the jelling power out if it. Fresh pineapple can also keep it from jelling.

Pour ½ cup of cold juice into a glass measuring cup or container. Sprinkle gelatin on top of juice and allow to soften for 5 minutes. Add 1 ½ cups juice to gelatin mixture and microwave 2 minutes (do not boil). Pour into a medium bowl. Add additional cup of juice and sour cream. Whisk together until sour cream is well incorporated. Add pears. (At this point, if you want to be fancy about it, pour into a mold.)

Put in refrigerator for 2-3 hours or until it jells. If you want to unmold the jelled dessert, you can dip the bowl briefly in hot water and overturn it onto a plate. Since I am just using this as a take along for lunch, I opted to just scoop servings from the bowl. This makes about 6 serving with 0 grams of fat/serving.

Variation: I expect you can put any kind of canned or cooked fruit in this, such as fruit cocktail or mandarin oranges. This was not the most attractive jelled dessert, but it did use up a lot of odds and ends – and it tasted good.

I am making the plum strudel again, for no particular reason other than 1) I need to do it again so I can post it after my disastrous initial attempt, 2) a friend of mine and I are running errands and we plan to come back to the house for tea, and 3) still too many plums left. I decided to use the same plum mixture as I did before, since it tasted good. I used 3 cups of plums rather than 4, because it seemed to me that 4 cups was too much to fit in the dough, and I added flour to the mix, like the apples, to absorb some of the copious plum juice. But the biggest change was that I handled the phyllo dough like the apple strudel recipe, rather than the elaborate procedure for layering that I tried before.

Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare a large baking sheet or jelly roll pan by spraying with butter-flavored cooking spray.

Toss the plums, brown sugar, prunes, and rind in a large bowl.

Place 1 phyllo sheet on a large work surface (cover remaining dough to keep from drying); lightly coat phyllo sheet with cooking spray. Place one phyllo sheet at a time atop the others, coating each with cooking spray as you stack the layers. Place a sheet of plastic wrap over stacked phyllo, pressing gently to seal sheets together; discard plastic wrap.

Spoon plum mixture along 1 long edge of phyllo, leaving a 2-inch border (it will actually cover most of the phyllo). Fold over the short edges of phyllo to cover 2 inches of plum mixture on each end.

Starting at long edge with 2-inch border, roll up jelly-roll fashion. (Do not roll tightly, or strudel may split.) Place strudel, seam side down, on the prepared pan. Score diagonal slits into top of strudel using a sharp knife. Lightly spray strudel with cooking spray and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Bake 35 minutes or until golden brown. This makes 8 servings at about 1 gram of fat/serving.

Confession. This plum strudel was just determined to give me trouble. I forgot to defrost the phyllo dough last night, so I put it in a warm place on top of the stove while I ate breakfast and then made the filling. Unfortunately, the spot was too warm, and part of the dough baked while thawing. I cut the sheets in half and only used the unbaked halves, but it was kind of a patch together job. Fortunately, phyllo is flaky, and it is hard to tell if the flakes are natural or part of the patch job.

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Naturally, after services last night there was an oneg, food for the congregation to eat. In my small congregation, this is always a potluck, and for Rosh Hashanah, it tends to be fruit and sweets, along with the traditional challah, and apples and honey so that the new year is sweet. It is traditional to make desserts with apple, or honey cake, in keeping with the holiday. I decided on an apple strudel. Of course, since I still have mountains of plums, I also made a plum strudel – but more about that later.

This strudel uses on of my favorite techniques, phyllo dough instead of fatty pastry dough. Phyllo (or filo) is paper-thin sheets of raw, unleavened flour dough used for making pastries or savory dishes with a flaky crust. When layers of phillo are baked, they become flaky, but have little fat. The technique used is to stack the very thin sheets of phyllo, spraying each with cooking spray before adding the next sheet. This strudel recipe came from Cooking Light.

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare a large baking sheet or jelly roll pan by spraying with butter-flavored cooking spray.

Combine raisins and amaretto in a bowl. Microwave at high 1½ minutes; drain well. Combine raisins, apples, sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a bowl. Toss well, and set aside.

Place 1 phyllo sheet on a large work surface (cover remaining dough to keep from drying); lightly coat phyllo sheet with cooking spray. Place one phyllo sheet at a time atop the others, coating each with cooking spray as you stack the layers. Place a sheet of plastic wrap over stacked phyllo, pressing gently to seal sheets together; discard plastic wrap.

Spoon apple mixture along 1 long edge of phyllo, leaving a 2-inch border (it will actually cover most of the phyllo). Fold over the short edges of phyllo to cover 2 inches of apple mixture on each end.

Starting at long edge with 2-inch border, roll up jelly-roll fashion. (Do not roll tightly, or strudel may split.) Place strudel, seam side down, on the prepared pan. Score diagonal slits into top of strudel using a sharp knife. Lightly spray strudel with cooking spray.

Bake 35 minutes or until golden brown. This makes 8 servings at about 1 gram of fat/serving. This tastes heavenly on its own, but whipped cream or low fat ice cream would make a nice addition. Be sure to add the extra fat grams.

You will note another, misshapen, strudel in the foreground beside the apple strudel. This is the ill-fated plum strudel. I used a different recipe, and, although it tasted terrific, it fell apart. I think that the plums I used were much juicier than the plums the recipe anticipated – and unlike the apple strudel the recipe did not call for flour to thicken the filling. Mind you, both strudels disappeared from the table in minutes. But I’m going to make the plum strudel again to perfect it – after all, it’s not like I don’t have plums.

I have lost 200 pounds. I did not do it through surgery – I don’t like knives and needles – or by joining a club, vigorous exercise, or rigorous dieting. I did it by gourmet cooking. To be precise, by cooking low fat, really delicious food. I love to cook as much as I love to eat. Food magazines are some of my favorite reading. I would feel deprived if I couldn’t have the sensuous experience of good food crossing my lips. This blog is about my perpetual feast, my passionate love of food, with recipes, photos, and occasional advice and principles that I have learned along the way.